Recipes

I've had a few people ask me for recipes in the past week and decided to share some here. The hard part is I don't always use a recipe. I smell spices to see which ones would work the best in a recipe and just chuck in a pinch or two. I'll add a slosh of cooking wine and a handful or two of veggies. This makes it hard to write a recipe down. But I'll try my best.

The first one is easiest as it's my Mom's banana bread recipe, just slightly modified to make banana muffins. These are yummy and make a great breakfast or snack.

Banana-Pecan Muffins

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (I use PC Organic)
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter (or low fat Greek yogourt)
1 egg (or equivalent amount of egg whites)
2 or 3 mashed bananas
1 lemon (grated peel and juice)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped pecans

1) Preheat oven to 350F and grease 12 cup muffin tin.

2) Grate lemon and squeeze juice into a small bowl then mash banana with juice and peel. Add vanilla and set aside.

3) Blend flour, ground flax, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.

4) Cream sugar, butter, and egg well.

5) Add dry ingredients alternately to creamed mixture with mashed bananas. Blend well after each addition. Stir in pecans.

6) Scoop a quarter cup of batter into each muffin tin. Bake about 22 minutes and cool on rack.

Simple White Sauce

2 tbsps whole wheat flour
2 tbsps butter
1 cup milk

Melt butter in a pot and add flour. Stir until combined then pour in one cup of milk. Stir continuously until mixture thickens and begins to boil. Remove from heat.

The nice thing about the white sauce recipe is it's very versatile.  Grate some cheese into it and mix with noodles and you have macaroni and cheese. Today I used it as a base for vegetable gravy.

Roasted Garlic

1 bulb garlic
oil to drizzle

Preheat oven to 400F. Rub some of the paper off a bulb of garlic then slice the top off, just deep enough that all the cloves have the tip cut off. Drizzle the bulb with oil and wrap in foil. Place on a pan or cooking sheet (unless you want oil dripping on your oven floor) and bake for a half hour. Remove (carefully) from foil and cool.

I made poutine for dinner tonight. I used the white sauce as a gravy then mashed a bulb of roasted garlic with some cooking wine and added that to the white sauce with some snips of fresh dill and some freshly ground black pepper. Homemade fries are dead easy. Just chop potatoes into whatever size fries you want, keeping in mind the thicker they are the longer it'll take to cook them, and rinse them in cold water. Pat dry with a towel and drizzle with oil. Then cook at 400F for 40 minutes (for medium cut fries), turning once at the halfway mark. I used white cheese curds as they didn't have any colour added. They turned out really yummy and the sauce would have been just as good as a topping for rice. Or even with some freshly shaved Parmesan over fettuccine noodles.

Bonne appetit!